This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn JohnsonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I can tell by the book that Marilyn Johnson is a big library fan. She spends most of the book talking either in sweeping generalizations (librarians are spinsters with buns? Not so! They're hip & tattooed & have blogs and stuff - or spend their off hours in virtual libraries) or in crushingly minute details (does anyone really want to know how many outfits her Second Life avatar has?). The first half of the book is spent "myth busting" the spinster librarian schtick. While it's true that librarians are occasionally annoyed about stereotypes surrounding the profession, she doesn't do much better - while gushing about how hip librarians are (young ones, mind you - around 30 yrs old when she was hovering in 2nd Life around 2006ish) she doesn't acknowledge male librarians at all until about half-way through the book. Most of the men she discusses in the beginning are related to IT, some are librarians & some aren't. What's important is that they're techy. And cool. And defending your privacy. (which is legitimately one of the awesome things about librarians).
Anyway, after the Second Life thing (which is toooo long for such a niche and was pretty much passe before it began), she starts handwringing over libraries changing (in particular the New York Public Library research building changing its role somewhat to allow some (only some) space for circulating collections. She almost whines about DVDs and you can almost hear the "yech!" in her voice when she adds children's story hours, which of course always sound good to Trustees and other people in government. Some collections would not be instantly available, but if the patron was planning a research visit and contacted the library, the materials he/she was interested in would be waiting for him/her when they wanted their stuff. She totally ignores the fact that these (ick!) teens and (ugh!) children as well as people looking for <> DVDs would probably never have come into that building in their entire lives if these changes hadn't been made. A research library only does any good when people use it and its materials.
She complains about budget cuts & several of the librarians she interviews are upset that catalogers in particular non-English languages have been reassigned to other library positions. What she doesn't talk about is that in the budget crisis, the library didn't have to sell its nigh priceless rare books & papers, which are still available to scholars, writers, & everybody who was using them before. Some of the reading rooms have been repurposed & the collections moved, but the collections still exist. The library has changed, but remains intact. No need for handwringing. Please. Libraries are different than they used to be because the public we serve has changed (including writers, thank you very much, many of whom want to be able to have power & wifi for their laptops while researching). That's all. Public librarians are public servants. Though as a profession, we've always tried to shape our public somewhat, the world is changing too quickly now for us to shape the public toward what we want them to be - we need to at the very least meet them halfway. And that as I see it, is nothing to complain about.
Recommended? Not for librarians. I was optimistic by the title & kind of retro cover art. Do NOT be deceived! This might be a good book for a librarian to give to someone who thinks the Internets will soon take over everything & that we'll all live in a paperless society. And drive flying cars. Because everybody already drives the ones with wheels so well. Robot maids!! Wait. That's the Jetsons. I guess I'd recommend it to those people just because I haven't read another that's as accessible about the changes in the profession from about 1995-2009. Just none of it's news to librarians. Sigh... disappointment.
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